I do this so you don’t have to, the Kim Kardashian mobile game Kardashian (real originality in naming the game but I guess you have a Kardashibrand you don’t want to mess with it). The game is getting a fair amount of press recently due to the fact it’s on track to rake in $200 million $85 million of which will go to Kim in particular (since she is listed as a “co-designer” of the game). It is estimated by this time next year it will have grossed over $400 million dollars based on revenue trends.

So what is this game? It is the most bizarre example of the conflicted nature of contemporary pop culture you can see in any one place. In a way it is a Rorschach test held up to the face of humanity and the various evils we see tells more about ourselves than the creators of this beast. This sounds like hyperbole, but trust me, it’s not. You start by creating an avatar that has a variety of racial and asthetic options setting your hair, eyes, and skin colour as well as your starting clothes. What’s the common theme here? They are all rail thin, the kind of rail thin you get when you eat cotton balls soaked in juice. Okay, so not great start, already promoting body dysmorphic disorder!

From here you start your job working in a shop in LA. You work a bit of a shift closing up shop using your “energy” points (that regenerate in five minute increments) to perform menial tasks. After closing up shop you then get the treat of bumping in to Kim on the street, you have a couple of dialogue options available to you but both pretty much result in you opening the shop for her and giving her a dress (great okay, issue two, entitlement of the 1%). She decides because you gave her something free that probably wasn’t yours to give she likes you and is going to MAKE YOU A STAR (say that last bit like an old timey movie producer).

She starts by getting you hooked up with an agent, who then hooks you up with a publicist and gets you “appearances”. That’s right! According to this game that, let’s be honest, is primarily marketed to little girls you can be famous for just giving people stuff with zero actual talent or ability. Over the course of your career you shill for a vodka company, you make “appearances” at events, you get modeling contracts, and you get a job as a buyer based on zero experience beyond that of being a clerk who just gave Kim a dress. Along the way you meet many a person, the stereotypical jealous “witch”, the metro-sexual photographer, the yapping paparazzi, the handsome model. This game is more filled with trite stereotypes than a Stephanie Myers novel (mind you it’s the same target demo).

As you progress you unlock bedazzled Kim medallions that you can use to purchase more energy or unlock special conversation paths to get new “contacts”. You can get these medallions by completing specific tasks and gaining particular “feats” (which show up as achievements in game and in your game centre in the iOS version). Additionally there are pop up ads, like a LOT of pop up ads, when ever transitioning from one area to the next you’ll usually get one or two pop up ads come up. Additionally you can earn in game cash or Kimedallions (as I call them) by completing surveys, signing up for subscriptions, downloading recommended apps, buying from highlighted retailers, or watching advertising. This is pretty typical click farming/pay to win behavior and I can’t really fault the developer or the Kardashians for using this. Why mess with a working formula? If I don’t get pissed at Pixelpeople for doing it I can’t get pissed at Kim. Here’s where it gets super sleazy, most of these games will ask you to invite friends, post updates on Facebook and Twitter and basically pyramid scheme your friends in to the game using your real life social media friends to that’s all pretty standard fare (not cool but standard) where it does become uncool is they will slip real life people in game. If you follow say @StarNews_Ray in game and you’ve hooked your twitter account to the game you will then follow @StarNews_Ray in real life on twitter! This became a bit of an embarrassment when the U.S. EPA posted how it was now a C-List celebrity in Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Yup someone was using their government issued iPhone to play this game at the EPA. Probably not the intended consequence when they moved from Blackberry to iPhone in the US government.

What do I think of this game, it’s evil, it’s promoting the crassest form of gross commercialism having children play pretend pimping vodka, doing “night club appearances” and so on. This perpetuates the “I can be famous because the internet told me so” myth that seems to be so common among people today. If the game included a homemade sex film level I would not be shocked. At the same time it does some shockingly progressive things, while making fun of a manager who’s an old man apparently out of touch with his children and technology it has women in positions of power (even though one appears to be a rage fueled vindictive witch with a b). It has a great deal of diversity with people of colour and different genders in multiple roles, and even tackles sex! At one point an allusion to masturbation as a stress relief is dropped, it was a Shrek level joke where if you were over a certain age you’d get it, under a certain age no go.

One of the “mini-games” is romance. You go on dates and build relationships. This is where we go from subtle to overt and I’m actually impressed. Kim offers to set you up on a date, she outright asks you if you like boys or girls (regardless of gender) and then she jokingly says she tried to set a friend up but it didn’t work out but she could have sworn that the one person was gay. Meaning, she set up two people of the same gender and mistakenly thought one of them was homosexual which is why it didn’t work out. It’s straight up advocating equality in romantic relationships which is awesome! This alone almost balances out the more evil aspects of the game in my mind.

The game itself is a click farmer, there’s nothing to write home about here. A million other brands created a million other games with the exact same mechanics. What sets it apart is the brand, Kim (love her or hate her) is a force to be reckoned with and this is the latest extension of her media empire. For all the things she isn’t she certainly is smart and she jumped on this at the right time in the right place with the right messaging. Worst of all this bugger is addictive, I honestly am going to have a hard time abandoning my K-Stu clone to the wilds of E-List celebrity struggles. (I don’t even read TMZ and look I’m dropping stuff like K-Stu after playing this game, that’s how insidious it is!)

Pro:- Easy mechanics- Pleasingly progressive social message regarding sexuality and equality of race and gender even if it's couched in the context of all races and orientations are equally vacuousCons:- Click farmer- Sneaks its way in to your real life twitter friends-Farms Facebook and Twitter information- Pay to win structure will bilk the unaware for increasing amounts of money- Disturbing message for its target audience (young girls) that shilling shilling alcohol and a culture of entitlement is somehow okay

1/5**It gets the 1 in acknowledgement of creating an insidiously infectious work of pop culture addiction wrapped in simple gameplay in the same way crafting a Katy Perry song requires skill.